← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence: Trump and House GOP taking health care away from poor people so Elon Musk can be richer
00:41:24
Tonight on The Last Word: House Republicans narrowly adopt Donald Trump’s budget resolution with deep Medicaid cuts. And the Trump-Musk cuts to USAID threaten the world’s most vulnerable people. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Del. Stacey Plaskett, and Erin Boyd join Lawrence O’Donnell.
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- [00:00]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Must be 21 years or older. Terms and conditions apply. Businesses that are selling through the roof like Untuckit make selling and for shoppers, buying simple with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And with shop pay, you can boost conversions up to 50%. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Untucket uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com podcastfree all lowercase go to shopify.com podcastfree to upgrade your selling today. Now it's time for the last word with the great Lawrence O'Donnell. Good evening, Lawrence.
- [01:04]
Rachel Maddow
Good evening, Rachel. You are an avid user of Blue sky, and my laziest approach to Blue sky is to simply re sky or whatever we call it your skies because they're so informative and go right to the heart of what's happening every day.
- [01:22]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, I just use it like as I'm. As I'm reading in, as we're discussing.
- [01:26]
Rachel Maddow
Stuff on the show and as we're.
- [01:27]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Figuring out what's going on in the news landscape. Just like stuff that I. People that have eyes on, stuff that I think that I've come across that I think is worth seeing. I wish that Blue sky let you post videos that were longer than one minute because sometimes what I come across is like video clips of things that I want to post and you can only coast one minute clips. And as you know, I have trouble being succinct, but other than that, it's everything I want.
- [01:53]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah, I mean, I actually use it sometimes so that I will remember what I care about so that when I get to work I can go, hey, wait, I sent the thing and I. Oh yeah, it's that, you know, notes.
- [02:07]
Lawrence O'Donnell
To self seek that the world can see.
- [02:09]
Rachel Maddow
It's notes to self. Senator Elizabeth Warren is going to join us. She had one of those shadow hearings they're calling it today, which is the Democrats having their own version of a hearing, which are clearly now the most important versions of hearings you can have in either the House or the Senate. And when they do it, I'm a big believer in giving them as much attention as possible since those Republican chaired hearings are the ones that get the official, you know, camera coverage everywhere. This is a kind of resistance to what is happening in the Congress and what is happening in the White House that is absolutely necessary and for people to know about it. I've got to deliver it to them through this forum that we have here.
- [02:59]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yeah, I'll be interested, you know, to. I want to hear you talk to her about that hearing. I want to hear what she has to say about the House passing this budget tonight. A lot of storm and drawing today about whether or not the Republicans were able gonna be able to corral the votes from their own members to do it. But now that they've done that, I'll be really interested to hear what she has to say about the eventual path of that bill and whether or not particularly these Medicaid cuts, which would be just, I mean, really, really, really dire, they would collapse state budgets all over the country and would ruin a lot of people's lives.
- [03:32]
Rachel Maddow
I'd be interested to hear what she.
- [03:33]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thinks is the fate of this.
- [03:34]
Rachel Maddow
And Rachel, here's the really weird thing about the Medicaid cuts, and that is that last week Donald Trump said they weren't going to touch Medicaid. So that's weird. Like, I don't get it. How could he say last week to Sean Hannity, absolutely not going to touch Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And then tonight they touch Medicaid in a very big way.
- [03:59]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Maybe they, maybe, maybe he forgot to tell them not to do that. Maybe now they'll remember, like notes to self. Now we're doing it right here. Give them a little poster. Remember you said that maybe.
- [04:09]
Rachel Maddow
Right. So they weren't watching Fox when he said it. Okay. All right. That must be it. Okay, thanks, Rachel.
- [04:16]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thanks a lot.
- [04:16]
Rachel Maddow
Thank you. Well, as you just heard, House Republicans tonight passed a budget resolution that will violate Donald Trump's campaign promises and will violate a promise that he just made last week. It was a week ago that Donald Trump said this about not cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security won't be touched other than fraud or something. We're going to find it's going to be strengthened but won't be touched. Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched. None of it's going to be touched. But tonight, with Donald Trump's approval, the House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that will Require the biggest Medicaid cuts in history.
- [05:08]
Lawrence O'Donnell
House Republicans had a clear choice today. They could choose the American people, or they could choose far right extremism. And when the choice was in front of them on the House floor, House Republicans chose Donald Trump, they chose Elon Musk, and they chose their billionaire puppet masters over the American people. The House Republican budget resolution will set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history. It's outrageous.
- [05:49]
Rachel Maddow
$880 billion in Medicaid cuts is now the official position of the Republican House of Representatives, with every Democrat in the House voting against cutting Medicaid. Massive cuts to the federal share of Medicaid mean that millions of people are likely to lose their Medicaid coverage in many states. And in the same budget resolution that will cut health care for the poorest people in America and for the working poor, the richest people in America will profit from massive tax cuts paid for in part by the cuts to Medicaid. Donald Trump is running an administration of billionaires where the most powerful person appears to be not the president, but the much richer Elon Musk, the richest person in the world who will benefit in every possible way from the Republican budget resolution that takes health care away from poor people and the working poor so that Elon Musk can be richer. Elon Musk, in what appears to be an illegal incursion into the government of the United States, which has been blocked, that incursion has been blocked in some ways by judges across the country, is determined to destroy completely some government agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development, the richest person in the world, apparently hates the agency that delivers life saving medicine to the poorest people in the world, to the poorest babies in the world. The same agency that delivers food to starving children, food for starving babies. Elon Musk is opposed to that, Says he wants to completely destroy all of that. He says it's a criminal organization, that feeding starving babies, feeding people in a famine, is a criminal organization. He's opposed to every ounce of food delivered to every starving child or starving adult anywhere in the world. He is as perversely and fully opposed to consumer protections for you. Before she was elected to the United States Senate, Elizabeth Warren created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration. It was the first government government agency in the country dedicated to the active protection of consumers, the active protection of all of us, protection against businesses trying to harm us financially or in other ways. Elon Musk is opposed to you being protected against any companies anywhere that are determined to exploit you. In any way they can. As the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee today, Senator Warren convened what Democrats are calling a shadow hearing about what Elon Musk is trying to do to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Only the majority party in the Senate or the House can schedule an official hearing. So what the Democrats, led by Senator Warren did today, in many ways looks like a Senate hearing. They had it in a hearing room, but it is not an official Senate hearing, which really only means that the testimony delivered at the hearing will not become part of the Congressional Record. But because it was a legitimate attempt to get at the real truth of what Elon Musk is doing, it was more important than any official hearing Republicans have held in the Senate this year.
- [09:29]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Our focus today will be on what could be one of the biggest cons in American history. The theft of billions of dollars from American consumers. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are going all out to try to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and make it easier to cheat people out of their hard earned money.
- [09:54]
Rachel Maddow
It's about getting away with theft. That's what it's about. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau exists to protect you from being cheated. And Elon Musk wants to make sure that you can be cheated in every possible way.
- [10:14]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Elon Musk wants to offer a new X Money feature on his social media platform. But some other apps are already out there and Musk would have to compete against them. By seizing control of the agency, Musk can now root through all of the CFPB's confidential data that Doge has accessed on these potential competitors. As Musk launches his new app, he faces oversight from the cfpb. His plan seems to be to eliminate the watchdog, which would leave him free to scam and steal however he wants. And that is why I invited Elon Musk to the hearing today. Congress and the public deserve answers about why he's trying to kill the cfpb and answers about what he would gain personally if he's able to shut the agency down.
- [11:20]
Rachel Maddow
Elon Musk, needless to say, did not show up to explain himself to Senator Warren today.
- [11:29]
Lawrence O'Donnell
No surprise, Mr. Musk is a no show. He is too afraid to show up in person and defend his actions. He hides behind a gusher of silly tweets. But Elon, in case you're watching from your bunker or your Oval Office, it isn't too late. We're going to be here for another hour and a half. We have saved a seat for you and we all have plenty of questions.
- [12:01]
Rachel Maddow
Senator Angela, also Brooks of Maryland said this.
- [12:05]
Lawrence O'Donnell
It looks like the billionaires have literally run amok. They are getting what they paid for. They are raiding our government. And what is so sinister about what they're doing is while they run amok and they are really hoping to profit from our government, then they want to leave people like Ms. McCaul, who is my constituent, in a lurch. And so I know that Senator Kaine just spoke about veterans. I understand that while you were serving our country in Iraq, you came home only to find that a car you purchased you couldn't. Couldn't get. So just. Can you tell us how long it took for you to try to resolve the issue with your car? Yes, Senator. I had retired from the army in February 2023, and my family was moving here to Maryland. This is where we decided to purchase a home, live out our rest of our lives, ideally. And it took from the moment I went to go ship the car in January 2024, it took a year before I had the titling for that vehicle. And the State of Maryland told me in October of 2024 that I'm legally not going to be allowed to drive it until I get that. So we were kind of panicked for about three months before we knew of the CFPB and was relieved when an email online and eight days later, they call telling me that they will do the thing that they were legally contracted to do in the first place. So only eight days after CFPB got involved, after almost a year of trying.
- [13:31]
Rachel Maddow
To get this resolved, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said this.
- [13:38]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Just from my view, when I look at these Minnesota numbers, 15,340 complaints that have yield relief. That's incredible. You've got 2,000 complaints from older Americans, over 3,000 from veterans. Thank you, Ms. Gillen. And dismantling this CFPP is the opposite of lowering costs. The opposite, and I hope the Trump administration understands this. Republicans claim that they're going to reduce financial burdens, yet their actions will drive up costs for consumers.
- [14:11]
Rachel Maddow
Laurel Isolas, who was forced out of her job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau two weeks ago, explained that much of the work that the agency does is invisible to the people they protect.
- [14:26]
Lawrence O'Donnell
As the head of the supervision division with a staff of 550 people, we were in the business of preventing fraud and lawbreaking by big banks and other financial institutions every day. Most people are unfamiliar with the work of supervision because it happens behind the scenes and is confidential. You likely will never know that we instructed your lender to give you a refund because neither the company nor the CFPB will say it publicly. But in the most recent two years, the supervision team advised banks and mortgage companies to refund more than $350 million that were charged in illegal junk fe to their accounts.
- [15:12]
Rachel Maddow
Lord Lysalis described a typical consumer protection case, the kind of protection Elon Musk wants to make sure that you never have again.
- [15:24]
Lawrence O'Donnell
A woman was placed in foreclosure proceedings because she failed to notarize a form and she didn't know why her application was denied for she had applied to a program where she could reduce her monthly payments, was never told of the requirement and was never told she could fix it. Our staff were looking at those files and questioned the company and said, give us a reason why you denied this application. And they didn't have one right. So they were, they had to go and fix the problem. And the woman was able to keep her home. And that is work that is happening on an ongoing basis. Well, was happening as of two weeks ago.
- [16:06]
Rachel Maddow
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell explained how important the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is to the work of state attorneys general.
- [16:17]
Lawrence O'Donnell
While most view the attorney general as one who only advances public safety and of course, we certainly do that, we do so much more. My number one priority is to address the issue of affordability. And every day we work to help residents build wealth, hold companies and individuals accountable for scamming them, and work to put money back into the pockets of our constituents. We do this while working with a wide range of stakeholders, but most importantly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Since its inception, the CFPB has returned over $20 billion to consumers. It was created to protect the homeowner struggling to pay their mortgage. The first generation college kid who was unknowingly duped by a predatory for profit college. The hardworking American forced to incur more and more debt, whose last pennies are being threatened by debt collectors using unscrupulous practices and so many more.
- [17:22]
Rachel Maddow
Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She is the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. And thank you for, for holding an informative session there where we're actually learning something about how government was working up until two weeks ago.
- [17:47]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Right. And you know, put it in a little context here. Think about Donald Trump when he ran for president. He spent a year telling everybody in America he was going to lower costs for families. Remember how he said repeatedly his words, he would lower costs on day one. That's what he Kept saying, and here we are, we're in the second month of the Trump term. And not only has he done nothing to lower costs, instead what he's doing is he shut down. He sidelined this consumer agency that actually helps people and has returned money to people when they've been cheated. So he's driving up costs for consumers, for families, instead of pushing them down exactly the reverse of what he promised.
- [18:43]
Rachel Maddow
So this is an agency which, by design, returns a profit directly to the American people, directly to the consumers it protects.
- [18:55]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yep. In fact, think about it this way. What this agency found is they found over the last dozen years, $21 billion of places where banks and credit card companies and payday lenders and online money transfer outfits in your bank, your checking account had cheated people, had tricked them, had trapped them, but clearly had broken the law. They found it, they got in touch with them, they went after them, they prosecuted them, and most of all, made them return money directly to people they cheated. Now, just so you understand, when you sideline that agency, all of that activity stops. And that's basically what we talked about today. The thousands and thousands and thousands of people who turn to the consumer agency every day. More than 7 million people have gone to the consumer agency's hotline to get help in individual matters. All of that process, we just did a report on this. It slows way down because there's nobody at the agency to be able to handle it. The agency had about 40 lawsuits that it was in the middle of, that it was going forward. After some of the worst actors fighting it out in courts, all of that has stopped. Two weeks ago, I had Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, in front of me in a banking hearing and asked him, so who's enforcing the consumer protection laws across the country right now? His answer, no one.
- [20:35]
Rachel Maddow
So Elon Musk in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, where he's kind of towering over him and, you know, Donald Trump's looking up at him, you can interpret it for yourself, maybe afraid, maybe not. They kept insisting that if there's a conflict of interest in anything Elon Musk is doing, he will of course not engage in whatever that was. He'll step out of the way. And the judge of that conflict of interest will, of course be Elon Musk, according to the Trump Musk system, for checking. Conflict of interest. Might there be a conflict of interest for Elon Musk being engaged in closing down consumer protection?
- [21:16]
Lawrence O'Donnell
So think of it this way. Remember, Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X hemorrhaged buckets of money and then announced that his new scheme to make money would be X Money. So he wants to create an online money transfer platform. Who would be the oversight to make sure that he actually follows the law? It would be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If you can sideline him, then Elon Musk gets to go forward and cheat you in as many ways as he wants, knowing the cops are not on the beat. But wait, that's not enough for our conflicts of interest here. He's got a second one right now. He's got his little minions running through the agency's data and that means who knows what he's doing with it. Picking out potential customers, seeing what people like. He gets to rummage through all of the personal financial data that this agency has. But best of all, he at least has the opportunity to rummage through his competitors data because the CFPB regulates all the other companies that are doing what X Money was about to do or what it is going to do. He can look in there and I don't know what he's looking for. Look to see what was profitable, what's not profitable. Where were you violating the law? Where did you build up more customer base? Where did you not? It is an extraordinary, extraordinary conflict of interest and also flatly illegal. But Elon seems to think he's a law unto himself.
- [23:00]
Rachel Maddow
Senator, I learned a lot in today's hearing, especially this point that had not really been clear to me before that so much of the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is invisible to us. There are correct that can show up on our bank statements or credit card statements or different things that maybe just the company did that. It turns out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did it and isn't getting credit for it by the people who are being protected. Why can't that be made more clear to the people who benefit by that protection?
- [23:36]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, partly we do try to make it clear by coming here and talking with you and all the people who listen. And I'm grateful for that. But do understand this is frankly a part of how a government infrastructure should work. You know, I don't ask for the engineering reports on the bridge. What I know is that I have a government I can trust and an army corps of engineers that makes sure it's a safe bridge to be able to travel over the same kind of thing should be true with our financial infrastructure. You should be able to take out a mortgage or buy, use a credit card or an online payments transfer and not have to worry that somebody is cheating you and cheating you in ways you may never see because they tricked you on fees they charged you that they legally couldn't do. The ways they calculated interest. There are a thousand ways to cheat people. We know. We've watched them do it. And the whole idea here is not for people to be able to have to read these credit card agreements that used to be 30 pages long. It's to make the market work smoothly so people can try to build some financial security and know that the basic underpinnings that you're treated just fairly, level playing field with your credit cards, your checking accounts, your mortgage, your car loans. That's what the CFPB is all about. It's kind of like your, your infrastructure in your financial system. And damn it, Elon Musk thinks he can just come in and knock all that out. Because it will be one more way for the richest man on earth to get just a little bit richer at the expense of American families. And this is a time just to say no. No to Elon Musk, no to Donald Trump, and no to these damn billionaires who think they ought to be able to the earth and make everybody else eat dirt. Enough of that.
- [25:46]
Rachel Maddow
Senator, there's a couple more things I want to ask you about the Republican budget they passed in the House tonight and also the federal judges who are struggling to figure out who's in charge of what in trying to shut down agencies. But the control room desperately needs me to cut to a commercial right now for a couple of minutes. We're going to do that. We'll be right back with Senator Elizabeth Warren.
- [26:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [27:22]
Rachel Maddow
Blogs and in depth essays and listen to coverage as it unfolds. Go beyond the what to understand the why. Download the app now@msnbc.com Apple Gap tonight, all but one Republican voted in favor of the Republican budget resolution on the House of Representatives that will cut $880 billion from Medicaid while cutting taxes for the richest Americans by $4.5 trillion and increasing the debt by $4 trillion. The one Republican voted against the bill was actually in favor of even more drastic spending cuts. The vote was 217 to 215, which means if one more Republican had voted against it, the bill would have died on the House floor in a tie vote of 216 to 216. Senator Elizabeth Warren is back with us. And Senator, as we know, this is the beginning of a multi stage budget process. This is just one vote in the House. There's a lot more votes to go for this to actually become law. But we now clearly have the Republicans on record as ready to inflict historic massive cuts on Medicaid.
- [28:36]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yeah, well, you know, Lawrence, we've been doing all this renaming the Gulf of Mexico, 25% tariffs, with Canada trying to shut down consumer agencies that are helping people. It's like a sandstorm swirling around. But at the end of the day, what it's now coming down to is what all of the sound and fury has been about. And that is tax cuts for billionaires paid for on the backs of hardworking Americans. And we have now seen the House just put it out there in its full glory for everyone to see.
- [29:14]
Rachel Maddow
And so from here, the Senate has to do something. Is the Senate going to produce something similar? The Republicans in the Senate?
- [29:22]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, I don't know if it'll be exactly the same, but remember what happened at 4 o'clock in the morning last Friday? And that was we were in the middle of this thing, remember, called a Votorama, where we're voting on the first version of the Senate's bill to start heading in this direction. And I had an amendment and I stood up and said, look, we all know where this is going, so let's just, how about we just have one vote that says whatever else happens, let's put in the instruction that says no one who makes more than $10 million a year is going to get a tax cut. We don't have to do all the other details. Can we just do that part? And so we, we did this by voice vote. And the Democrats all said yeah. And the Republicans, no. So then Mark Kelly stood up and said, okay, I tell you what, how about $100 million? Democrats said yes, no tax cuts for people making more than 100 million. The Republicans, oh no, boy. And they really gave it some muscle. Angus King stood up and said, how about $500 million? If you're making 500 million, could we agree you don't get a tax cut? Democrats said yes. All of the Republicans gave their big, hearty no. So Chuck Schumer said, okay, how about a billion? Could we just agree that if you make a billion dollars in taxable income, you're not getting a tax cut under the Republican plan? And the answer still was every single Republican saying no. So I think they've told us pretty, pretty clearly where they are headed.
- [31:15]
Rachel Maddow
That is the best illustration of it I've ever heard on the Senate floor. I wish I had stayed awake to watch that. Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
- [31:24]
Lawrence O'Donnell
You bet.
- [31:25]
Rachel Maddow
Thank you. Coming up, Congresswoman Stacy Plaskett eloquently opposed the Republican budget in the House of Representatives tonight, which the Democrats came within one vote of defeating. Congressman Plaskett joins us next. Our next guest, Democratic congresswoman Stacey Plaskin said this before House Republicans passed their budget resolution by one vote.
- [31:55]
Lawrence O'Donnell
I rise in opposition to this budget. We know that a budget is a statement of values. In simple terms, you put your money where your mouth is and the money my Republican colleagues are getting right now is going to the class that they are beholden to, the uber wealthy. The bulk of those called savings come from slashing Medicaid funding which ensures that 70 million Americans and funds from the children's health insurance program chip where another 10 million American children are healthy. Those savings that they're getting are being created so that they can then give that money, give those savings to the ultra rich. Right here, right now. Republicans are trying to steal health care from 80 million people and they're heading to the bank as millions of Americans are left helpless. What is happening? What's going on? Republicans are intentionally targeting grandmothers, targeting children, targeting veterans that live in your neighborhood. My fellow Americans, they're going to throw some peanuts, a couple of hundred bucks at each one of us and tell us that you're getting some taxes back. But that's the amount of money that the very wealthy are getting. Average $314,000 are going to them at the Expense of American people, Fraud, waste and abuse. They're going to tell you they're using that money to get rid of illegals. They're going to tell you that they're going to try and dramatically change the landscape. No, they're only changing the landscape for those individuals that they are beholding to.
- [33:36]
Rachel Maddow
Democratic Congresswoman Stacy Plaskett of the U.S. virgin Islands joins us now. She's a member of the House Budget Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. Congresswoman, at least we now know what their actual governing approach is. They've finally had to put it in writing and now we know what they're doing.
- [33:56]
Lawrence O'Donnell
We do. And we know that all of them are lock in step with the plan. And the plan is to make sure that the uber wealthy get their tax cuts at the expense of the American people. Let's remember that Elon Musk said what he thinks about our fellow Americans who rely on Medicaid, Medicare, school lunches, Pell grants for college education. He called them the parasite class and said that we need to take these things away from them, which we know is the money that they're going to use to pay themselves.
- [34:34]
Rachel Maddow
And it's not enough. They take $880 billion from Medicaid and they still cover in the legislation their tax cuts which are so much more enormous. So they just raise the debt. That's their solution to that?
- [34:52]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Sure. Think about it. They're going to slash $2 trillion from the budget and if that's not enough, they are still going to give $4 trillion to individuals in tax cuts. That means that there's still a $2 trillion hole that they're going to have to raise the debt by to be able to give individuals who do not need that money those amount of taxes. And be assured, as we've seen in the past, there's not going to be any trickle down. Those individuals keep that money in their pockets. That does not circulate into the economy and the American people will never see that money again.
- [35:33]
Rachel Maddow
So there are many steps down the road from here. There has to be the so called reconciliation process process where the same committees who've been involved in this will then actually pass individual bills to reconcile with this resolution that's passed tonight. And there's plenty of ways this train can go off the tracks in the House of Representatives in that process.
- [35:56]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Sure. You know, Lawrence, I felt that the budget bill was going to be passed. Some of my colleagues were optimistic that there could not be Republicans who would vote for this. Many of them and many of the red states are the ones that have the largest number of individuals that are relying on some of these safety nets to be able to take care of their families. And yet, and still their desire to satisfy the needs of Elon Musk and the president are far outweigh their desire to support the individuals who voted for them and put them in office. And I suspect that we're going to see that same thing when it comes to this actual reconciliation process. But Lawrence, you can also be assured the Democrats will stand up for the American people and will not vote for any kind of bill that raises the debt but does not take care of the American people.
- [36:54]
Rachel Maddow
Congresswoman Stacy Plaskett, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
- [36:58]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thank you.
- [36:59]
Rachel Maddow
Coming up, federal judge keeps ordering Elon Musk and Donald Trump to resume funding the United States Agency for International Development Development, and they keep refusing to follow the judge's orders. That's next.
- [37:17]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [38:13]
Rachel Maddow
It's President Trump's first 100 days and MSNBC's Alex Wagner will be covering it.
- [38:20]
Lawrence O'Donnell
All from the front lines. What issue matters to you the most?
- [38:23]
Rachel Maddow
Join her as she travels the country to talk to the people at the center of the president's policies.
- [38:28]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And do you think now that he's pardoned everybody, he can count on this group of people again? Search for Trumpland with Alex Wagner wherever.
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Rachel Maddow
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- [38:41]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [38:48]
Rachel Maddow
Today, a frustrated federal judge gave Donald Trump's administration until tomorrow at midnight to pay all invoices for foreign aid contracts for work completed before February 13, the date of a court order blocking the blanket freezing of foreign assistance payments. The judge has been trying to force Donald Trump and Elon Musk to resume that funding, and so far they have not complied. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof illustrated what that blanket funding freeze means for the United States Agency for International Development. Quote, having covered the United States Agency for International Development for decades, I reached out to my contacts around the world to get the real story of the Trump Musk demolition. In Sokoto, Nigeria, toddlers are starving because emergency feeding centers supported by USAID have run out of the nutrient rich paste used to save the lives of severely malnourished children. Nearby warehouses have the paste but can't release it without a waiver from the agency, which is in such muskian chaos that it cannot issue the waivers. Nicholas Kristof quoted our next guest, former USAID nutrition expert Aaron Boyd. Thousands of children can die. Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times documented several other consequences of the funding freeze. USAID had stopped paying medical medical workers responding to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda that has spread to three cities. More than 30 studies or clinical trials have been halted around the world, including in South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan and Peru. And the Trump administration announced plans to cut another 1600 USAID jobs two days ago. Nicholas Kristof reports. In Kismayo, Somalia, a hospital serving 3,000 people each month has had to close its doors, an aid worker told me, with patients carried away on donkey carts or in wheelbarrows. The BBC quoted an emergency room organizer in Sudan saying, quote, people are knocking on the volunteers doors. People are screaming from hunger in the streets. One aid worker told BBC News, quote, you see them wearing out and thinning in front of you malnourished children. Joining us now is Erin Boyd, a former senior nutrition advisor for usaid. Thank you very much for joining us. What are you hearing and what do you know has been happening around the world, especially in areas of nutrition crisis and famine.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Thank you so much for having me, Lawrence. I think the biggest problem right now, a lot of NGOs are trying to figure out which stabilization centers, which are the parts of the feeding centers where the most critically ill children who have a 12 times higher risk of mortality, so they're very, very sick. A group of NGOs right now are trying to map out which of the Stabilization centers across about 15 countries have been closed since the freeze on foreign assistance. So far, it sounds like in countries like Haiti, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, as you just referenced, that there are about 75 of these centers that have closed. And I think this mapping exercise is not complete. It's only about halfway finished. Through that, NGOs different implementing nutrition organizations are also trying to share resources and information in efforts to keep feeding centers open if and at all possible. And so that's kind of what's happening right now on the ground. A real scramble to try to work together collectively and salvage any parts of these programs that's possible.
- [42:55]
Rachel Maddow
What do the people who literally are starving, who have been fed by usaid, when they show up, when they're there, and there's nothing, who explains what to them?
- [43:12]
Lawrence O'Donnell
There are so many heartbreaks with what's happened over the past three and a half weeks with usaid. But that for me is the biggest. It is the frontline health workers, often from those communities and countries themselves, who have been trained, sometimes by international organizations, sometimes by UN agencies, by ministries of health in those countries with USAID support. And those frontline workers from the community are the ones who have to turn away their neighbors and friends and say, even though you received treatment last week, there's nothing for you here and we have nothing to offer you.
- [43:48]
Rachel Maddow
And at what level does it make it through that it's the richest person in the world? Who is doing this to them?
- [43:58]
Lawrence O'Donnell
That's a great question. And I don't know. At the very level, at the community level, in more rural areas of Burkina Faso or Chad, for example, people obviously read the news and they know what's going on in the US I don't know how much people associate it with the richest person in the world, but certainly the organizations, the humanitarians, they are very well aware and feel, of course, enraged because this is a work that people are passionate about. They've spent their lives and dedicated their careers to professionalizing, building technical skills. Being able to give back to these communities and to not be able to do so because of greed, essentially is just wrong on so many levels.
- [44:48]
Rachel Maddow
Aaron Boyd, thank you very much for the work that you have done, the work that you want to do, and for sharing your expertise with us tonight.
- [44:55]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thank you so much, Lawrence.
- [44:57]
Rachel Maddow
Thank you. We'll be right back. USAID nutrition expert Aaron Boyd gets tonight's last word.
- [45:11]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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